The wind shifted at midmorning.
Dry and sharp, it clawed across the outer walls of the outpost with a sound like rust scraping rust. The sort of sound that got under your skin and made you listen harder than you meant to. It carried more grit than usual, whispering along seams of stone and metal as though trying to get in.
Ryen Daros noticed it first—not with his eyes, but through the ancient sensor unit fused into their central console with spit, salvage, and whatever passed for wire on Aleru. A flicker on the outer detection net. Too faint to trigger an alert. A feather-brush of something just at the edge of the sky.
He leaned forward.
The pulse hadn't come from atmospheric interference. And it wasn't weather.
Deliberate. Narrow. Directional.
A scan.
"Could be a glitch," Ryen muttered to himself, knowing full well it wasn't.
He rerouted power from the hydrocell core to amplify the receiver band and sifted through the archived telemetry. A single pass—clean, targeted. Just enough for someone to peek through the clouds and take a snapshot of the terrain. Then gone, like it had never been.
Something in orbit had scanned the surface.
He didn't like that.
By the time Eli returned from drills—jacket half-zipped, sweat painting streaks of dust across his brow—Ryen was already neck-deep in diagnostic code.
"You're pushing the generator too hard," Eli said, dropping his training pack onto the nearest bench. "Console sounds like it's chewing through its own teeth."
"I can't afford not to," Ryen replied. "We had a sweep this morning."
Eli froze, mid-sip from his canteen. "A sweep?"
"Orbital scan. Tight pattern. Artificial. Not natural."
He rotated the monitor toward Eli. The scan imprint still shimmered faintly—like a scar etched into empty sky.
Eli frowned. "Think they're looking for us?"
Ryen didn't answer right away.
"If they're not now," he said eventually, "they will be soon. We've been cautious, but this planet's thin-skinned. Doesn't take much to leave a mark."
Eli stepped closer, eyes scanning the data. "I've barely been reaching out. Just local stuff. Nothing big."
"You've been pushing the Force harder than you realize," Ryen said flatly. "And you're growing. Fast. That's noise. That's light."
Eli looked down.
Ryen stood and rolled out his shoulders. "Training perimeter's cut down starting tomorrow. No more runs above the canyon rim. And no Force projection past ten meters. I mean it."
Eli bristled. "I'm not the one lighting up orbital sensors."
"No, but you're the one flaring like a flare every time you spar," Ryen shot back. "You're not meditating. You're projecting. You think I don't feel it?"
"I'm just training."
"You're venting," Ryen corrected. "Big difference."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was brittle. Thin like frost before it breaks.
That night, Ryen relocated their drills into the tunnel network behind the outpost—collapsed during a seismic shift cycles ago, now just barely wide enough for saber practice. The walls were close. Claustrophobic. The kind of place where instincts fought with muscle memory.
Eli's saber hummed low and anxious as it cast long, flickering shadows across the rough stone. There was no space to leap or twist. No acrobatics. No release.
"This isn't combat," Eli muttered after Ryen deflected another series of tight strikes.
"This is control," Ryen said. "And you're lacking it."
Eli dropped low and went for a sweep. Sharp. Fluid. The hit might've landed.
But Ryen shifted like liquid shadow, caught the motion in half a beat, and locked sabers just inches from Eli's chest.
"Still angry," Ryen said quietly. "Still leading with emotion."
Eli's jaw clenched. "I'm not—"
"You are," Ryen interrupted. "And it's getting worse. If you can't see that, then you're already in trouble."
They disengaged. The blue-white glow vanished from Ryen's blade as he stepped back into the dark.
"Again?" Eli asked, chest rising with tight, ragged breaths.
"Not like this," Ryen said. "Not until you stop fighting yourself."
⎯
Eli didn't sleep that night. Not well.
The cot felt too narrow. The metal ceiling too low. The wind outside had thickened—its cadence shifting from whisper to growl. A storm was forming in the west. Fast. Too fast. And it wasn't the kind that brought rain.
Just motion.
Just presence.
He sat up, peeled off his blanket, and reached for his lightsaber.
It hummed quietly when he thumbed it on.
It didn't comfort him.
The wind hissed along the seams of the stone like it was hunting something. Eli slipped out and climbed to the overlook—the jagged ridge just above the canyon lip. He'd come here often to clear his mind.
Tonight, the stars were hidden. The sky swirled with slow, deliberate clouds shaped like spirals drawn by a hand that knew geometry too well.
Something was wrong.
He reached out into the Force.
It came, but sluggish. Filtered. Not dark, exactly—but veiled. As if he wasn't meant to see too deeply.
Or as if something didn't want to be seen.
Beneath the veil was movement.
Massive.
Focused.
Cold.
Eli pulled back sharply. His breath caught in his throat. For the briefest moment—just a flicker—he thought something had looked back at him.
Not just sensed him.
Recognized him.
His fingers closed tightly around the saber hilt. And he turned and made his way back down to the outpost without stopping.
⎯
Inside, Ryen hadn't moved from the console.
The scan pulse had returned. Then again, nine minutes later.
Each time closer.
They weren't searching anymore. They were tracking.
Ryen didn't call Eli.
He closed his eyes instead, reached out like he hadn't in years—back into the muscle memory of old teachings. He let the Force rise slowly. Not to control it. Not to fight.
To feel.
Resistance. Immediate.
Not from within.
From above.
A weight in orbit. Waiting.
Watching.
Ryen opened his eyes. Jaw tight. He stood slowly and went to check the emergency gear stashed near the comms panel. His fingers brushed over the handles of two old packs, still half-packed from their arrival three weeks ago.
Outside, the wind howled louder.
⎯
By dawn, the storm was taking shape.
No thunder. No rain. Just flashes of pale, lightless static pulsing in the sky like veins of silver without source. The clouds churned not with air, but with intention.
It wasn't a weather system.
It was a countdown.
And above the atmosphere, veiled by clouds and vacuum, something moved—graceless and cold.
Not a droid.
Not a ship.
A shadow with breath.
A hunter without name.
And it had found their trail.